Coke. What can be said about Coke? Who doesn’t love Coke? There is probably no one in the world who hasn’t seen the Coca-Cola logo in some form at least once in their life. Coke is definitely one of the, if not THE, biggest, best, most recognizable brands ever. It holds a permanent seat in the ‘brand security council’ and is challenged in its ubiquitous recognition only by other brand heavies such as Nike and Windows (and even they haven’t been around as long). The Coke logo, when seen, does things to our brain that Pepsi, try as it might, just can’t. Why?

 Is it the simple boldness of Red? The beautiful flowingness of the scripted type? The white wave? ‘Classic’? These are questions we mere humans can only ponder. What we do know is that the hard ‘K’ sound of the C’s in ‘Coca-Cola’ have a ’sticky-ness’ in our thought processes (because of all the high-fructose corn syrup?) that make it easier to remember. And visually, the big curving ‘C’s’ in the logo are much more pleasing to the eye than a ‘K’ would be in there place. Even an updated logo (seen at right), with its varying reds, highlighted type and addition of bubbles is still true to all the things that make it a great logo.

What we do know is that the Coke brand is everywhere. And people love it. Coke has done an amazing job at managing it’s brand through the years. But a brand that grows so big for so long can only lead to one thing. It’s eventual ’sag’ from favor. While markets such as Central America and China have continued to see strong growth for Coke, numbers for the United States and Europe have recently been trailing off. With the influx of numerous specialty drink brands like Red Bull et al, Coke has been struggling to stay ‘cool’ in today’s trend swayed market.

As an answer to our culture’s forever fickle nature, Coke has recently launched a new campaign they call ‘M5‘. With M5, Coke has invited several design firms around the world to design a label for a new aluminum ‘bottle’. Accompanied by a super-slick website (love the world map made of leaves… although… why leaves? Cause it’s Fall? Not everywhere.) the bottles will be released in coming months at clubs in major cities in an effort to get the cool-kid trend setters to re-love Coke. A reinvention of the Coke drinking experience if you will.

As much as we totally love and respect Coke for the success it has had at keeping dentists the world over in business for life, we think this is an unfortunate direction for them to be taking. This is in no way any disrespect to Designers Republic, Lobo, MK12, Rex & Tennant McKay or Caviar, the design firms Coke invited to put their mark on a bottle. Heck, if Coke asked us to design a bottle, we’d jump at the chance. But a few missteps were taken here. First and foremost, what happened to the logo!?! Coke just took it’s strongest emotional connector to human hearts and minds and threw it out the window in favor of swirly designs in lots of fun colors other than RED! Also, the whole idea of a ‘viral campaign’ is a little weak. The virus may spread but vaccines are soon developed and those infected will soon forget. Releasing it to the hipsters at night clubs is the wrong target. Unless Coke has added alcohol to the secret formula, we’re not interested. That new bottle becomes a bright, swirly, colorful symbol for ‘designated driver’ to that chick at the other end of the bar, so, unless you have killer wheels, that could be trouble. Trying to tie the new Coke bottles with new song releases is a red flag. One persons’ fave band is another person’s least fave as well as the fact that songs come in and out of fashion quicker than H & M’s spring collection. And those hip kids may look like they’re brain dead with that iPod in their ears, but they ain’t stupid. They have quite a knack for smelling a band that they think has ’sold out’ to the man (that’s you Coke). That sort of product/singer tie-in strategy only works with Brittany fans and NASCAR watchers.

A few suggestions for Coke. Make sure you’re all clear on the human rights front. The kids hate that stuff. Besides that, if you want to reinvigorate the cola drinking masses around here, you should stick with what you do best - the COKE LOGO! Don’t mess! The real area that could use some added excitement is the drinking experience. How the user experiences the act of drinking your beverage. The aluminum bottle is just a rehash of an old form (which, btw, looked like that b/c it was made of GLASS! The material should have a say in its finished form n’est pas?). Maybe try a new shape? Although it’s pretty hard to beat the ‘can’ shape. Look for ways to play with how Coke is seen, held, drank, etc. A GREAT example of a drink that has tried to do something different in this respect is a Japanese soda called Ramune. The glass bottle is sealed with a glass marble which the drinker pushes in with an included plunger (a tab bit clumsy… but worth it). The marble then falls into the middle chamber just below while the soda is being sucked down. The marble becomes coated in carbonation bubbles and spins around. It’s really beautiful. The drink itself is fine but nothing extraordinary. It’s the visual experience of drinking it that will have us buying cases of the stuff into the future. Oh, and even though we can’t read em’, the logo and graphics are nice looking too.